Day Stem

What a Four Pillars chart gives you is the prevailing emotions and intentions of the world around you when your life began. Those prevailing emotions and intentions are the ongoing emotions and intentions that steer and influence your life.

The Year Pillar, Month Pillar, and Hour Pillar tell you what you have. The stem on top of the Day Pillar tells you what you are.

Look at William Shatner:

8 8 3 7庚 丙 辛 辛6 2 * 1寅 予 卯 未

This being 2010, I will assume that almost everyone who is reading this knows who Mr. Shatner is, but for the sake of historical record, I'll describe him anyway. William Shatner made his fame primarily from television. He was first widely seen on a couple of episodes from the original Twilight Zone. In 1966 Paramount and Desilu (Lucille Ball's production company) brought a science-fiction series set in space to network television. Shatner was cast as the captain of the Federation Star Ship Enterprise on the show Star Trek. This show garnered such loyal fans that when the show got cancelled, the fan protests were so heated that the networks did the unthinkable: they reinstated the show.

As an eleven-year-old in 1966, I got to see Star Trek when it first ran. In comparison to the pale, juiceless television shows clogging the schedules of the time, Star Trek was a revelation. It spawned a series of movies (which are still being made!) and a number of subsequent television series' based on the same Trek universe. Not for nothing have Trekkies, the fans of the shows and movies, proved to be the most fanatic of all show business fans.

A great deal of credit for the popularity of the show must go to William Shatner, who was iconic as Captain James T. Kirk. Shatner later went on to other television shows: T.J. Hooker, and the current Boston Legal, where he is just about as popular, at age 78, as he ever was. Incidentally, the Star Trek shows are heavily about Sheep. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Kate Mulgrew, Whoopi Goldberg, Marina Sirtis, and Ethan Phillips are all born in Sheep Years.

Personal aside: I was in the audience at the Emmy Awards the night William Shatner won his first Emmy Award — in 2004! My wife worked on a cartoon show that was nominated for an Emmy, but which lost — almost as usual — to The Simpsons. This was the technical and animation Emmy awards show, but some acting celebrities were awarded their prizes that night to keep things entertaining. Further asides: Dan Castellanetta is tall and skinny and looks nothing like Homer Simpson, and the ordinarily silent Teller, of Penn and Teller fame, speaks very eloquently when the microphones are turned off.

If you look at the third column from the left, the number in bold face is the Stem on top of the Day Pillar. The number 3 on top of the Day Pillar tells you basically what Mr. Shatner is: an active, center-stage, highly talkative and expressive person. Does anyone out there doubt that this is exactly what William Shatner is?

If you have any doubt that the Day Stem is what primarily types you, let's look at someone who has that 3 right on the outside, on top of the Year Pillar, which shows how you appear to the general public, and where theoretically the general public should be able to see it. This is Queen Elizabeth II:

3 9 7 4丁 庚 壬 丙1 3 3 0丑 辰 辰 寅

If the Year Pillar made all of the difference, then Queen Elizabeth should be impossible to shut up. As we know though, Dear Liz spares the general public from hearing her incessant chatter.

Suppose we choose a celebrity who has a big number 3 on top of his month Pillar. I give you that walking gab-fest, Hall of Fame baseball player Hank Aaron:

1 3 5 9壬 戊 丙 甲9 1 7 9戍 申 寅 戍

One of Aaron's minor league managers said, No one can guess his IQ because he gives you nothing to go on.

I've deliberately chosen examples of people who have trouble accessing their talkative Pillar. But what's the factor in their chart that makes talk so difficult to access? The Stem on top of their Day Pillar, that's what. That's why the Stem of the Day is put in boldface on the chart: it means so much. The Stem of the Day — often referred to in the tradition as the Day Master, is the pivot around which everything in the Four Pillars chart revolves.

If you look at the Day Stem, and find that emotion, expression, and talk benefit them — and the person has a talkative piece in their chart, then the person will be talkative. If not, not.